


Family Stories Through Time

by wildz907



Series: Raina Song series [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Light Angst, Time Tots | Babies (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28602126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildz907/pseuds/wildz907
Summary: Raina Song might not have a normal childhood, but she has her family, and that's enough for her. Here are four lessons she learned from individual members of her family, and one lesson that she learned from all of them, through the stories they tell her. [Time Lord OC, 11th Doctor and River Song's daughter] [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm]
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Eleventh Doctor/River Song
Series: Raina Song series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210331
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm] on fanfiction.net.

“Once upon a time, there was a lonely little girl with a fairy-tale name. She didn’t have a mum, or a dad. She only had an aunt who was hardly ever around. One night she wished for a friend, and her wish was granted when a raggedy-looking Doctor crashed his blue box into her shed. He promised to show her the stars, but then he disappeared. She kept waiting for him, though, and her faith was rewarded when he came back for her years later.”

Raina loved hearing her grandmother tell her stories. Every child loved hearing stories, but for Raina, it was even more fun because she knew they were all true. Of course, Raina was no normal child. She was the daughter of a Time Lord, the last of the Time Lords. She had all of time and space at her fingertips. But even though she could have plenty of her own adventures, she still loved hearing about those of her family. Especially considering that her parents were careful about keeping her away from danger. As much as danger followed the Doctor, he had managed so far to keep his daughter safe. It helped that the TARDIS, who usually would take the Doctor into risky situations if he was needed there, was far more careful when Raina was onboard.

“But weren’t you lonely before he came back?” Raina asked one night when she was five years old. She was all warm and cozy in the bed she always slept in when she was staying with her grandparents. Amy was sitting on the side of the bed, telling her own story to Raina. 

“I was at first, yeah, but I made two friends who stuck by me, even when everyone else thought I was mad,” Amy told her with a fond smile on her face. “Rory and Mels were always there for me.” 

“Grandpa and Mum!” Raina said excitedly. 

“Exactly. I waited 12 years for the Doctor, but your grandpa once waited nearly 2,000 years for me. And your Mum has always been saving all of us, even when we didn’t know who she was,” Amy said. She had that sad look on her face that she got sometimes when talking about River. Raina knew that her mum had been taken away as a baby but found the child version of her parents and ended up growing up alongside them. Years later Raina would come to understand just how horrible the whole thing had really been, and she would learn exactly why Melody Pond had been stolen. But, for now, the story was one that showed that no matter if she was Melody, Mels, or River, Raina’s mother would always find her family. 

Raina reached her hand out from under the TARDIS-blue comforter and squeezed her grandmother’s hand. She might not know or understand all of the sad parts of her family’s history yet, but she could tell when someone was hurting. Amy smiled at the gesture, and ran her other hand through Raina’s brown curls.

“That’s the thing about our family, Raina. I’ve learned that no matter how bad things get, or how scared or alone I might feel, they will always be there for me. And we will always be there for you.”

As wonderful as Amy’s stories were, sometimes they made Raina feel a little sad. She could picture a young red-haired girl, waiting night after night for her new friend to return. How lonely had she been? Of course, before long she made friends with Rory and Mels, but still. It couldn’t have been easy, having everyone around you calling you mad and telling you that your friend wasn’t real. Raina knew that if she were ever to tell anyone that her father was a time-traveling alien, they’d definitely think she was mad. Maybe that was why she fixated so much on her grandmother’s childhood. Raina also felt lonely sometimes. 

“Do you ever wish our family was normal?” Raina asked.

Amy looked thoughtful. “I never wanted normal when I was younger. I wanted adventure and excitement, and that was hard to come by in Leadworth. But after I started traveling with the Doctor, and I learned the cost of living that life, I did start to wish things could be different. I don’t think I would change a thing, though, because if our family was normal, it wouldn’t be us. My little Melody would have never become River Song, and then we wouldn’t have you.”

Even for a Time Lord child, trying to make sense of all of the events that led to her existence was hard for Raina. There were still so many things that she didn’t really understand, and wouldn’t until she was older. Her grandparents were younger than her parents, and her parents were never meeting in the right order. Raina herself would never get to have a “normal” life. Her father was incapable of staying in one place for too long, and her mother was in Stormcage a lot of the time. The only time Raina ever had a taste of normalcy was when she was with her grandparents. They taught her what it meant to be human, even though Raina never really could be (and neither was she completely Time Lord). Thinking about any of it too hard made her feel sad, so she usually tried not to. 

Still, even though Amy’s stories sometimes made Raina feel a little sad, they also gave her hope. Little Amelia Pond’s Raggedy Doctor always came back for her. Amy Pond’s husband, the Last Centurion, never wavered in his loyalty for her. And though Melody Pond had been taken from Amy, she had come back to her as Mels, her other childhood friend, and again as River Song, the clever woman who could always be counted on. Any bad situation that Amy ever got into always ended with one or more of them coming to help her. She had faith in her family, and that was renewed every time that they came through for her. 

Raina Song learned a lot of things from Amy Pond, but maybe the most important thing she learned was to have faith in her family. Her family was weird and complicated, and their stories often had endings that were more bittersweet than happy. She would face danger and loss in her life, there was just no way around that, being the daughter of the last Time Lord. But perhaps the most important lesson Raina learned from her grandmother was this: 

She learned that no matter how hard things got, her family would never, ever abandon her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came up with Raina a few years ago, and I have some other stuff written for her that I'll post at some point! But for now I need to focus on this fic, since it's part of a challenge. There'll be five chapters total.
> 
> Thank you to Aviantei for giving me all of the support and encouragement I needed to get me writing again!
> 
> Thanks as well to my friends Cat and Des for beta reading this chapter. Des knows nothing about Doctor Who so she was a little confused lol I'm so sorry friend. Also thanks Cat for letting me babble on about this show to you for the last few years lol.
> 
> Next chapter will focus on Rory, as he teaches Raina about patience.


	2. Patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rory Williams teaches his grand-daughter about patience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm] on fanfiction.net.

“I’m always being left behind. It’s not fair!”

Raina was aware that she was being childish, but she didn’t care. After all, she _was_ a child, so it was okay for her to act like this from time to time. Maybe on Gallifrey it would’ve been different, but there was no such place anymore, and here on Earth kids had less pressure placed on them. Besides, as much as she loved spending time with her grandparents, it really just sucked that her parents never let her go anywhere exciting. Whenever there was the slightest hint of trouble, it meant she would be left behind in the (relative) safety of London, England, in the 21st century. (When the trouble was centered there, that meant staying inside the TARDIS). 

“Your father just wants you to be safe, you know. That’s all any of us want,” Rory told the young girl. 

“I don’t care! He was gonna take Grandma with him when she was my age, so why can’t I go?” Raina asked. 

“Well, it’s a good thing he didn’t, because it would have been way too dangerous for a child. And if he’d taken Amy away all those years ago, I never would’ve met her,” Rory pointed out. “Amy having to wait for the Doctor led to us dating, and eventually to your mother being born, and if none of that had happened, then you wouldn’t be here right now. You’ll get your chance to go on all sorts of amazing adventures, Raina. You just need to have a little patience.”

Raina let out an annoyed huff, but most of her anger had left her. She still wasn’t happy, by any means, but her grandfather had a good point. 

“Waiting is just so hard,” she complained. 

“It can be,” Rory agreed, and Raina was reminded once more why she loved her Grandpa so much. He didn’t talk down to her or try to dismiss her feelings, even when she was being kind of bratty. “I know Amy’s always telling you her stories. I waited 2,000 years for her, once. Really, all my life has involved waiting for her, and I’ve never regretted it once.”

Raina perked up, the last of her anger forgotten as curiosity took its place. She’d heard all of the stories from Amy’s perspective, but now she could hear how Rory saw all of it. 

“What was that like? Always waiting for her?” Raina asked him. 

“It wasn’t always easy. I’ve loved her since I met her. First I had to wait for her to take me seriously. Even back then she was really bossy, and she and your mum were always ordering me around. Then we got older, and I had to wait for her to notice me. That might have taken even longer if Mels hadn’t spelled it out for her that we both liked each other,” Rory told her. 

“So Mum basically set the two of you up?” Raina asked. “That’s so weird. I can’t imagine being the one to set her and Dad up!”

Rory made a face as if he hadn’t really thought about it in depth before. “I guess so. Looking back on it, I don’t know if she was just trying to be helpful, or if she was making sure that she would be born someday...” 

He looked fairly disturbed at that point, and he was quick to move on from that train of thought. “Anyway. We started dating, but even then I had to wait for her to be ready to really commit. Even once we got engaged, she was still quick to run off with the Doctor, the night before our wedding. But then he came and dragged me along too, and I started to understand why she loved traveling with him. It all went wrong, though, and I got erased from time. Apparently. But for me, I just remember dying, and then waking up as a Roman soldier. And I was also plastic, but I didn’t find that out until later. And then your parents and Amy were there, and she got hurt. It was my fault. The Doctor knew how to help her, though. We had to seal her into the Pandorica. Amy’s told you about that, right?”

Raina nodded. “It was supposed to be a trap for Dad. All his enemies wanted to lock him up. But Grandpa, didn’t my dad have Mum’s vortex manipulator? Couldn’t you have gone forward into the future to open the Pandorica and be with Grandma right away?”

“Yeah, I could’ve. The Doctor said the same thing. But a lot can happen in 2,000 years, and the only way I could make sure that Amy was safe was if I guarded the Pandorica that whole time,” he explained to her. 

“But that’s so long!” Raina couldn’t wrap her head around it. Even for a Time Lord, that was a long time, and humans weren’t meant to have that many years of memories stored in their brains. The whole thing should have driven him mad.

“It was. I’m not saying that it was easy, because it wasn’t. It was long and lonely. But I love your grandmother. She’s always been my world, and I would do anything to keep her safe. There’s some things that are worth waiting for.”

After that talk with her grandfather, Raina stopped complaining whenever she got left behind. She wasn’t happy about it, of course. She still would feel frustrated or sad or disappointed. It was hard to grow up hearing all of these wonderful and exciting stories, and then be told that she was too young to experience anything like them herself. Raina was the Doctor’s daughter, and she felt the universe calling to her. She always felt that urge to start running and never stop. Raina was River Song’s daughter, so she had that daring streak in her. Whenever she was told she couldn’t do something, it made her want to do it even more. Raina was Amy Pond’s grand-daughter, so she believed in fairytales even when many other children would already be losing faith. She knew that there was just so much more out there, and she was eager to see it all.

But Raina was also Rory Williams’ grand-daughter. Rory Williams, who had often been taken for granted by everyone around him. He had been seen as so average and unassuming, and so many people failed to realize that he was just as capable of greatness as Amy or River or the Doctor. Amy might have spent years idolizing the Doctor, but Rory was the one who ended up sacrificing himself for her, as many times as he needed to. This ordinary man from Leadworth ended up becoming a legend himself, The Last Centurion. He was the guardian of the Pandorica, and the man who faced a legion of Cybermen without flinching, all in the name of protecting the woman he loved. Rory Williams had an endless amount of patience, and this was something that his grand-daughter would take to heart.

Waiting was never easy, but if Rory could wait thousands of years, then Raina knew that she could wait a few more years to start making her own stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Rory. So much. I just finished re-watching season 5 and it reminded me of how amazing he is. This chapter was so much fun to write.
> 
> This chapter was beta-read by my amazing best friends, Cat and Des! Thank you so much you guys. Love you both!
> 
> Thanks as well to Aviantei for continuously giving me encouragement and reminders to keep writing. You’re the best!
> 
> Next chapter will be up in two weeks, and it’ll be about River.


	3. Bravery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River teaches Raina about being brave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm] on fanfiction.net.

Raina noticed something as she got older. Her grandparents always told her their own stories, but her mother always told stories about the Doctor. Some were stories that River was a part of, and others were ones that he had told her or that she had learned about from other sources. River very rarely told any stories about herself. She did sometimes talk about her life as Mels, when she grew up alongside Amy and Rory. But other than that, River Song did not tell her daughter about her past. Everything that Raina knew about her mother’s background was what she learned from her father and grandparents. Even her father didn’t like to talk about River’s past too often, and Raina stopped asking as much as she began to notice the guilt that he carried over it. 

But one day, it was just Raina and her mother. The Doctor had taken Amy and Rory out on a trip, so Raina and River were staying at the Pond residence. Normally, Raina would want to go along, but she had convinced Rory to adopt a cat a few months ago (at least for her, for Rory it had only been a month since they’d brought home the little orange tabby), and she had promised to care for him whenever her grandparents were away. Seeing as how Raina had only recently turned nine, she couldn’t exactly be on her own, so the Doctor had picked up River from Stormcage and dropped her off. Raina was rather pleased, as it had been a couple weeks for her since she had seen her mum. River had apparently just seen Raina a few days ago, but that had been four-year-old Raina. 

“Have you met Roman yet?” Raina asked her mother as she scooped up the kitten.

“I’ve seen him several times now. It has been a while since I saw him this young, though,” River commented as she scratched the kitten’s head. “I still can’t believe you found a way around your father’s “no cats” rule.”

“It’s his fault for only saying “no cats in the TARDIS”. If I don’t bring Roman into the TARDIS, then I’m not breaking any rules,” Raina said, looking rather pleased with herself as she flopped onto the light gray couch in the lounge, with Roman still cradled safely in her arms. “Besides, Dad has way too many rules. Most of them are stupid.” 

“Some of them can be, but most of them he has for a reason,” River reminded her as she sat down next to her. “As much as I have always loved to break rules, there are some that need to be followed. Soon you’ll be going on your own adventures, and you’ll need to be careful. Not every story has a happy ending.”

Raina frowned as she processed her mother’s words. When she was younger, she was always so taken in by the excitement and adventure of the stories she heard. Even when people were hurt or left behind, it always ended up being okay. But just because Amy and Rory always came back in one piece didn’t mean that the experiences weren’t terrifying or heart-breaking. And her beautiful, confident mother avoided talking about her own experiences, and that frightened Raina. 

“Can you tell me your story?” Raina asked. “You never really talk about it.”

River sighed, and for a moment, Raina could see all the pain and hurt that her mother kept so carefully hidden. “It’s not a fun story, Raina. I don’t know how to make it into a fairytale like Amy does for her stories.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need fairytales anymore,” Raina said earnestly. 

“To be honest, there’s so much I don’t remember. The Time Lord part of me does let me remember brief flashes of my parents, even though I was a baby. But it’s more like feelings than any real memory. After that, it’s all rather hazy. There was so much that I didn’t understand until years later, when I investigated my past to understand what happened to me. I know that my captors did things to me to give me more Time Lord properties. I know that they trained me to hate the Doctor. But they had these creatures with them, ones that affect your memory, so there’s just so many holes in there. Most of what I remember is always being alone and afraid.” River had a distant look on her face as she struggled to remember.

Raina struggled to imagine what that must have been like. She had lived her whole life knowing that however strange and complicated her family might be, they would still always be there for her. But her mother hadn’t been that privileged. 

“I kept hoping that someone would come and help me,” River continued. “And then one day, my parents and the Doctor showed up. I thought that I would finally get to go home. But they didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother hadn’t even given birth to me yet. They left me behind. Twice. I finally understood that nobody was coming for me, and it was up to me to get myself out of there. So I did. I ended up regenerating for the first time a few months later.”

Raina almost asked what caused her to regenerate, but she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. A child wandering the streets would be in danger in many different ways. Someone could have hurt her, or maybe she got sick, or maybe it was from starvation. All of the possibilities were horrifying, so Raina knew she was better off not knowing all of the details. 

“I ended up as a toddler, and I got taken in by a nice older couple for a few years. When I was around seven or eight, a man showed up and said that he could take me to my parents. That’s how I ended up in England in the 90s, though it still took me a while to figure out exactly where my parents were. But I did find them, and even though I didn’t really feel like I needed parents at that point, it was still nice to be around them. And that way, I would be in the right place to find the Doctor when it was time for me to,” River explained. “It really was confusing, hearing all of Amy’s stories about him. I was always told that he was a monster, but Amy seemed to see him as a hero. It turns out that neither of those was quite right. He’s just a man. A very good man.”

“How did you get through all of that without giving up?” Raina asked. River had been through so much more than what a lot of people ever had to go through, and she had just been a child. 

“I had to be brave. Even when I was completely terrified, I learned that I couldn’t let that hold me back. The Doctor helped with that, too. When I first regenerated into this body, I almost gave in to the fear. But he taught me that I can’t let the fear control me. That’s something that you will need to understand too, my love. Where the Doctor goes, danger follows. Everyone in this family will always fight to keep you safe, but I can’t promise that you will never get hurt,” River told her seriously. 

“But Grandma has always told me to have faith in you guys,” Raina said in an uncertain tone. Roman started squirming in her arms, and she absently let him go.

“And you should. We will  _ always _ come for you. But there may come a time when you have to be the one to save yourself. I don’t want to scare you, Raina. I just want you to be prepared. Traveling with your father is the most wonderful thing in the world. You will see such amazing sights, and go places others can only dream of. I don’t regret any of the suffering that I went through, because it led me to the Doctor. But there is always a cost. You will see and experience things that will frighten or confuse you,” her mother warned her. 

Raina finally understood what she never could when she was younger. River was the cost that her grandparents had to pay for traveling with the Doctor. They had their baby taken from them, and they never truly got her back. Growing up with her as children was not the same as getting to raise her. River was in their lives now, but she would never need them the way that they wanted to be needed. And as for River, to be the person she was now, the woman who loved and was loved by the Doctor, she’d had to suffer so much. She spent years of her life feeling unloved and alone. What sort of price would Raina have to pay?

“You’re not telling me that I shouldn’t travel with Dad,” Raina said slowly. “Even if it’s dangerous, you still think I should.”

“That is completely up to you. I won’t lie and say I don’t worry about what could happen. You’re my daughter, and I will always want you to be safe. But I could never try to keep you from following your heart. I know the stars call to you, the same way they do to me, and to your father. You might not have been born on Gallifrey, but you can still feel time and space around you. There will always be that part of you that yearns to go see what is out there, and I can’t ask you to deny that part of yourself,” River explained. And Raina realized that her mother understood her. River might not have as much Time Lord in her, but she still felt that need in her to go and explore and discover. She had probably felt it even as a child, trapped by enemies who wanted to use her, and then stuck in Leadworth until she became River Song. 

Raina threw her arms around her mother and hugged her tightly as she snuggled against her. It hurt to think of everything that River had gone through. Raina had always seen her mother as fearless, but now she understood that wasn’t accurate. River had been full of fear, and she’d had to choose time and again between giving up or pushing through it. But this knowledge also made Raina admire her mother more. She couldn’t help but think it was a lot more impressive to be afraid but not let that stop you. 

“I still want to travel with Dad,” Raina mumbled into her mother’s blonde curls. She couldn’t see her mother’s face, but she just knew that River was smiling. 

“I know you do, and I’m proud of you. I can’t wait to watch the two of you run,” River told her as she stroked Raina’s hair. 

Raina had always adored her mother. She’d always been told that she looked a lot like River, with her wild curls and green eyes, though her hair was the dark brown of her father’s. But she had always wanted to be like her, too. River was bold and clever and capable. In Amy’s stories, she had always appeared almost larger-than-life, the woman who even the Doctor struggled to keep up with sometimes. Raina wanted to be that impressive, too, and she had been eagerly awaiting her chance to prove herself. But now she knew it wouldn’t be all fun and excitement. There was a part of her that was apprehensive as she thought of her future. While the thought of getting hurt certainly frightened her, she was even more scared of seeing the people around her get hurt. How would she handle that?

But even then, there wasn’t really a choice. She was a Time Lord, and a human, and a Pond. There was a whole universe waiting for her out there, and Raina knew that she could never just spend her life sitting on the sidelines. While her family would never judge her for choosing not to travel, and in fact might even be relieved if she made that choice, Raina knew she would judge herself. She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t nervous about the negative consequences. She would be purposefully putting herself into potentially dangerous situations, and she would have no one to blame but herself for anything bad that happened to her. She would be able to regenerate, as far as her parents could tell, so at least she knew she most likely wouldn’t die. But even the thought of being hurt badly enough to have to regenerate was scary. Still, even that thought just wasn’t enough to deter her.

Raina wanted to be like River Song, so that meant that she had to be brave, no matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s chapter three! I was worried I wouldn’t get this uploaded tonight. I spent all day yesterday driving from southern California to Oregon, and then today I drove another few hours to go see my best friend Cat, and then another couple hours to finally arrive at the timeshare my mom and I will be staying at. Such a long weekend! 
> 
> Once more, thank you to Cat and Destiny for beta reading for me. You guys are both amazing and I love you so much! And thank you to Aviantei for the daily encouragement and reminders to keep on writing. You help me keep on track when I would otherwise likely go days without getting anything done!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. I hope this chapter is enjoyable.
> 
> Next chapter will be up in two weeks, and it will feature the Doctor.
> 
> Also for some reason everytime I update the fic it shows the note from chapter one below the note for the current chapter? Does anyone know how to fix this pls send help--


	4. Kindness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor tells Raina about the Time War.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm] on fanfiction.net.

The Doctor had more stories to tell than anyone else in Raina’s family. Well, Rory did have those 2,000 years spent guarding the Pandorica, but it seemed he often let those memories lie dormant in his mind. Plus, while he did have some interesting experiences, a lot of that time had apparently been pretty monotonous. Raina’s father, meanwhile, was always seeking out something new and exciting, so he had plenty of fun stories. He wasn’t always the best story teller, though, as he often would lose his train of thought, or just veer off in another direction. He was funny like that. A lot of his stories also seemed as though they were bittersweet for him to remember. So many good memories were tied up in feelings of guilt for the people he felt as though he’d failed. Not that he ever liked to talk about how any of those stories ended. He enjoyed telling her the beginnings and the middles, but endings were hard for him.

The one thing that he never talked about was what happened to the Time Lords. Raina knew that her father was the last of them, and by default, so was she. He would talk of Gallifrey, sometimes, so vividly that she could almost picture it in her head. She could envision the great Citadel, with its tall towers safely encased in a glass dome. She could picture Gallifrey’s other great city, Arcadia, standing tall and proud. She had dreams of running through fields of red grass, and climbing trees with beautiful silver leaves. Raina deeply wished that she could see all of it, and it made her so sad to know that it was gone. It only lived now within her father’s memory. But when she asked him what happened to it, he would always refuse to tell her. She gave up for a time, but the older she got, the more she wanted to know. 

So one day, when Raina was 10 years old, she asked once more.

“ _ Why _ are we the last of the Time Lords? I want to know. I’m ready to know.”

Her father froze, and he looked up from the re-wiring that he was doing to focus on her. They were both underneath the TARDIS console, as he had decided that his ship needed maintenance. Raina was pretty sure a lot of the “repairs” he did were actually very unnecessary. They were just due to his need to always be doing something. She didn’t mind, though. The changes he made were usually pretty cool, like that time that he changed the bed in her room into a bunk bed. The older she got, the more she was actually able to help him. Today, however, she hadn’t been able to focus. This question had been on her mind for days now, and she had finally worked up the courage to ask it once more.

Something in her tone or some expression on her face must have told the Doctor that she wasn’t going to drop it this time. He didn’t try to argue with her or distract her. Instead, he looked at her with a serious expression, and Raina felt anxious. Her father looked and acted like a foolish young man most of the time, but now, he really looked his age. As she looked into his eyes, Raina saw what he was always hiding, always running from. He had lived for over a thousand years, and he hadn’t ended up as the last of his kind just by pure luck. 

The Doctor inhaled sharply, and then nodded. The two of them put away their tools together, and then her father pushed some controls on the console. He walked to the doors, and Raina followed at his heels. He pushed the doors open, and Raina saw stars. They sat together in the doorway, with their legs dangling into space. Everything was still and cold and beautiful. Raina didn’t think she could ever get tired of sights like this: looking through the safety of the TARDIS in some remote galaxy, seeing nothing but distant stars all around her. Somewhere, at some point in time, every single one of those stars would burn out and cease to be. But, for now, they burned, and they were beautiful. 

Her father didn’t look at her as he started speaking. He just faced forward and looked out into space.

“There was a war. The Time War. I can’t fully put it into words, Raina, because this war was beyond the scope of any other war throughout history. It touched so many other worlds beyond Gallifrey and Skaro, and there were so many unspeakable things done by both Time Lords and Daleks.”

As her father told her about the Time War, Raina realized something. While she might have been ready to hear it for some time now, her father hadn’t been ready to tell her. Perhaps he never would have been. While over a century had passed for him since the Time War, the wounds still hadn’t healed, and maybe they never would. He coped by running from his past. Having to remember it was clearly something he wanted to avoid as much as possible. A part of her regretted asking, but this was something she had to know. This was all her heritage, though it had happened way before her birth. She would never get to meet anyone else like her, and she had to understand why.

“People speak of the Time War, but few people truly understand the magnitude of it. This was a war fought all throughout time, Raina. People would die in a battle, only to be alive again because someone changed something in the past. A battle would be won, only for the battle to never have happened, because the people that had fought in it had never even been born.

She felt sick as she listened to the Doctor tell her about the horrors of the Time War, and all that was lost during it. Old friends from his childhood days at the Academy died in battles against not only Daleks, but other foes too, such as the Neverweres. Old enemies were seemingly lost as well, such as Davros, who’s ship vanished within the jaws of the Nightmare Child. There were so many that her father tried and failed to save, and she could see how much it all burdened him, even after all this time. 

“In the last days of the Time War, I decided “no more”. The Dalek forces throughout time and space were all returning for a final, relentless assault. The High Council of Gallifrey were getting desperate enough to make a terrible choice. Rassilon wanted to enact the Ultimate Sanction, which would destroy everything. I couldn’t allow that to happen, so I made a choice. A difficult, horrible choice. I stole an artifact called The Moment, and I used it to end the war. They all died. Skaro was lost, but so was Gallifrey. I saved the universe, but at a terrible cost,” The Doctor said in a bitter tone. 

Raina had been staring straight ahead, just as her father had been, but now she turned away from the stars and looked to him instead. She almost wished she hadn’t, because Raina had never seen such a dark look on her father’s face before. He was always laughing and talking and acting utterly ridiculous. She caught glimpses, sometimes, of an underlying sadness, but never anything like this. This was a man who had lost everything. The last of the Time Lords, and it was through his own actions. Even for someone as clever as her, it was difficult for Raina to even begin to try comprehending. Her father was someone who pointedly refused to carry a weapon. He was always looking for a peaceful resolution to conflict, even at a point when most people would have just started fighting. She had always admired that about him, but now she understood why he was like this. He hated himself for what he had done, and he had spent every moment since then trying to make up for it. Raina worried that nothing he did would ever be enough, in his eyes.

What could she even say to him? She may be clever, but she was still just a kid. If her mother and grandparents couldn’t heal these old wounds, Raina knew she didn’t stand a chance of it. It wasn’t easy, admitting to herself that she couldn’t be enough. She wished that she was still a few years younger, so that she could naively think that love alone was enough. The older she got, the more that she understood that would never be true. Rory loved Amy, but it still hurt her to spend her childhood and teenage years being seen as the village crazy girl for believing in the Doctor. Amy loved Rory, but he still spent years and years feeling second-best to the Doctor. Amy and Rory loved their daughter, but River would spend the rest of her life knowing that she could never really be the child that they had wanted back. They all loved the Doctor, but that could never erase the fact that he destroyed his own people.

Even so. Raina slipped her hands into her father’s and squeezed it tightly. She didn’t know what words to say to help him. She didn’t think there really were any. But she was here, and she loved him, no matter what. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. 

The Doctor looked down at her, and his expression softened just a bit. 

“I made a promise to myself, after that day. I promised that I would never let anything like that happen again. I always try to give people a chance to change, to do better. It’s hard, sometimes. I’ve seen all of the ugliness that the universe has to offer, and sometimes I wonder if there’s ever anything worth saving. But then I meet people who remind me why I became the Doctor.” He had a fond look on his face, and Raina knew he was thinking of all the people he had met over his lifetimes. 

“But aren’t there some people who just won’t change? Like the Daleks?” Raina asked. 

“Even they can be capable of change. I haven’t always wanted to give them another chance,” her father admitted. “The first time I came across one after the Time War, I was just so furious. It didn’t feel fair that I had lost everything, and yet one of them still survived. And I’ve felt that way every time after that, whenever I find out even more of them survived somehow. But I still try to give them a chance. I had a choice, in my ninth body, to destroy the Daleks but also destroy the Earth. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t justify doing something that terrible again. I didn’t have to, though. My companion at the time, Rose, looked into the heart of the TARDIS, and absorbed part of the time vortex. She destroyed the Daleks, and saved our friend Jack.”

Raina had heard this story before, but not from her father. It was strange, hearing him talk about Rose, and knowing that he had loved her, once. It had bothered her somewhat when she was very young, since she didn’t like thinking about him loving someone who wasn’t her mother. But the older she got, the more she began to understand just what it meant to have such a long lifespan. As a Time Lord, her father outlived most people that he came across. That meant he was bound to have love and lost more than once throughout his life. It made Raina a little sad to think about her own future. What would happen if she ever fell in love? As far as her parents could tell, she took after her Time Lord side more than her human side. She would outlive almost everyone that she ever met. The thought was rather troubling, so she usually tried not to dwell on it. That was a problem for Future Raina.

“I met a group of Daleks a few times after that. They called themselves the Cult of Skaro. They even had names! One of them merged with a human, and wanted to change the Daleks. He learned about compassion and mercy. I wanted to help him, too, even after all I’d lost because of them.”

Raina wasn’t sure what she would do in that situation. If someone took her family from her, would she be willing to help them later on? She knew the right answer, the good answer, would be that of course she would help. But she didn’t know for sure if that was the true answer. She had a feeling that there was a lot she wouldn’t truly know about herself until she ended up in situations that would force her to act, one way or another. Sometimes she was tempted to try tricking her grandparents into revealing things about her older self. She knew that they knew her, since her father sort of dropped her off at random times. She’d even caught a glimpse of herself once or twice over the years, when her father wasn’t careful enough about remembering when he could take her to the Pond residence. But from a young age she had been taught about spoilers, and how dangerous foreknowledge could be. So she did her best to ignore her curiosity.

“You hate the Daleks though,” Raina pointed out. For as much as her father tried to avoid showing the darker sides of himself to her, he had never been able to mask his distaste for his ancient enemies. “So why would you want to help one of them?”

“The name I chose is more than just a title. It’s a promise that I made to myself. I can’t always stop myself from breaking it, but I have to try to hold myself to it,” he explained.

“And what’s the promise?”

“To be kind instead of cruel. I used to be a rather selfish man. Still sometimes am. But the humans I met over the years made me want to be better. After the Time War, it became more important to me than ever to try to be kind. There’s enough hate in the universe without me adding to it,” the Doctor told her.

Raina frowned as she considered his words. “That seems kinda unfair. Why should you have to be nice to people who are bad?”

“What’s the alternative? Hurting them in retaliation? Sometimes there is no other option but to fight back. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t protect yourself and those you care about. But I want you to remember that there is almost always another way. If even Daleks are capable of change, then just maybe we shouldn’t automatically write someone off. As a Time Lord, you have a unique privilege to make a difference in the universe. Don’t waste it by being cruel. I’ve seen that happen before, and I don’t want to see it again.” 

She had a feeling that he was talking about his childhood friend who became an enemy. She had heard stories of the Master, and she knew he had done a lot of bad things. But she also knew that, once upon a time, he had been her father’s closest friend. Even at the end, her father had still loved him, and still wanted to save him. Raina didn’t have a best friend, so she couldn’t exactly relate. There weren’t any other Time Lord/human children running around, at least not that she was aware of. But she did know that even if her father or mother or grandparents ended up doing really terrible things, she would still love them and have hope that they would change for the better. Even after learning of what her father had done in the past, Raina still loved him. She wasn’t sure if he had made the right choice or not. She hadn’t been there, so it wasn’t up to her to say. But she did know that he wasn’t a bad person because of it.

It would take time for Raina to truly process everything she had learned. The older that she got, the more she grew to understand that nobody in her family was infallible. They were all good people, but they had all made mistakes, and would continue to make them in the future. She would likely even learn more dark secrets about them as she continued to grow. Raina would have to keep coming to terms with all the new facets of them that revealed themselves to her. But that didn’t mean that she ever had to stop loving them. Besides, perfection was overrated. Their flaws were a part of who they were, and she wouldn’t have them any other way.

Raina didn’t know what the future would hold. She could find out about the futures of different planets and races, but her own personal future was a mystery. She didn’t know who she would grow to become. She had a big legacy to live up to, and it was overwhelming to think about at times. But she would just have to do her best and use everything that her family had taught her. She would need to have faith in herself and those she loved. She would need to have patience to get through the hard times. She would need to be brave, no matter what she came across. 

No matter how dark things got, or what she would lose, Raina would need to remember to be kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was so hard omfg. It didn’t want to get written. But I somehow got it done! 
> 
> I’ve recently started watching some Classic Who and I was surprised at how the 1st Doctor was kind of a jerk at first. But it was cool seeing him soften up and become more respectful and understanding thanks to Ian and Barbara. I’m excited to watch more of the older stuff so I can have a better understanding of the Doctor’s character! 
> 
> This chapter was beta read by my friend Destiny! Thank you again for helping me out.
> 
> Thanks again to Avi for encouraging me and making sure I work on this fic every day, even if it’s only a few sentences at a time. 
> 
> Last chapter will be up in two weeks!


	5. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look into Raina's adult life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm].

“This was the longest year of my life. Being linear was so boring! How can people stand staying in one place at one time?” Raina complained to her mother.

They were sitting in Amy and Rory’s backyard, in the aftermath of the Shakri incident. Raina’s grandparents were preparing to start traveling with the Doctor again. She was excited to go explore, after having been on Earth for a year now. River had just shown up to check on everyone, and Raina was sure her mother was likely a little disappointed to have missed all the action. 

“Surely it couldn’t have been all that boring? After all, mysterious cubes dropped down from the sky,” River pointed out. She didn’t look at all impressed by her daughter’s whining. 

“I mean, okay, they were interesting at first. Any mystery always is. But then they just did nothing for a super long time. And of course Dad just kept skipping ahead, while I was stuck taking the long way ‘round with Grandpa and Grandma. And Great-Grandpa Brian was there too, a lot of the time. He took watching the cubes more seriously than anyone else,” Raina remarked. “Still, the whole thing was uneventful apart from the beginning and the end.”

“You’re sounding more and more like your father the older you get,” her mother said with a sigh. “Was living on Earth really that bad for you?”

Her mother actually seemed a little worried, and that made Raina feel bad. She was well-aware of how melodramatic she was being about the whole situation. It was definitely a trait that she’d gotten from her father. At the age of 18, she couldn’t exactly blame it on being a child. She wondered for a second if her next body would be this dramatic, but she chose not to pursue that train of thought. She was in no hurry to lose the form she had been born in.

“I mean, it was kind of nice spending that much time with Grandma and Grandpa. I think they enjoyed having me around. Going to school was boring, but it was interesting getting to interact with people my age every day, even if they were all humans.” Raina loved humans, but it had been a challenge going to secondary school and having to pretend to not already know everything they were trying to teach her. The fact that she could teach any subject better than her teachers made it especially grating. She had also had a lot of initial discomfort, since she had no clue how teenagers were really supposed to act. But she’d made some friends after a while, and it had been rather nice at times. It was a glimpse of a normal life that could never really be hers. 

“I know what you mean. I hated going to school back when I was Mels. But growing up with Amy and Rory was nice, and I wanted you to at least have a taste of a normal life,” River explained. Raina felt like she understood that, now. Being forced to stay in one place, and to go to school on top of that, had felt like a punishment at first. It hadn’t helped that her parents had been frustrated with her constantly running off and getting herself into trouble. But now she could see that, in a way, this had been intended as a gift for her.

“I still think that Dad should have gotten your help with this whole cube mess. But I think his pride got in the way of that,” Raina said, wanting to change the subject. “One of his hearts stopped, you know. Bet he didn’t mention that to you.”

River’s eyes flashed with exasperation for a moment. “That man! For someone so smart, he’s excellent at making stupid decisions.”

Just then, the door to the backyard opened, and the Doctor poked his head out. “What are you two talking about?”

River and Raina exchanged amused looks. Raina couldn’t help but wonder if her Dad had some sixth-sense that let him know when he was being talked about.

“You!” the two curly-haired women answered in unison.

“All good things, I hope?” the Doctor asked suspiciously as he walked over to them.

“Oh, of course, sweetie,” River lied. “Raina was just telling me all about how you saved the Earth once more.”

“Well, I couldn’t have done it without my Ponds,” the Doctor said, relaxing at River’s words.. “Speaking of, are you going to travel with us?”

“Not this time. I’ll let you all have your fun. But I’ll be there if you need me,” River reminded him with a fond smile. 

The Doctor looked disappointed at River’s answer, and Raina felt the same way. It wasn’t often that all of them got to travel together. Then again, Raina’s mother had a habit of showing up randomly anyway, so there was a chance they’d end up running into a younger or older version of her. 

“Okay, we’re ready!”

Raina turned and saw Amy and Rory leaving the house with a couple bags of clothes. She was pretty sure some of their clothes were still on the TARDIS, but then she figured they might not want to wear stuff that they’d worn years ago. 

“Melody, are you coming with us?” Amy asked River.

“Sorry, but I’ve got too much to do. I trust you and Dad will be able to keep these two in line, though,” River said, gesturing to her husband and daughter.

“Hey!” The Doctor and Raina both called out in an offended tone.

“He’s much worse than I am,” Raina insisted. 

“No I’m not! I’m your father, that should automatically make me more responsible than you,” he argued.

“Yeah, coming from you, that’s not exactly a convincing argument,” Rory interjected. 

“See, he’s on my side,” Raina said, feeling rather superior. The Doctor was saying something about betrayal, but she tuned him out.

“I didn’t say that,” her grandfather disagreed. 

“Yeah, you just spent a year with us. We know exactly how much trouble you are,” Amy pointed out. 

“At least she wasn’t as bad as Mels,” Rory said. 

“Why am I being brought into this now?” River questioned. She shook her head, and then looked at her daughter. “Before I go, I just want you to know that I’m proud of you for trying something new. I remember just how frustrating secondary school could be, but you lasted an entire year, and that’s something to be proud of. I really hope that at least some aspects of it were fulfilling for you.”

Raina smiled at her mother’s words. Even though she was an adult now, there was still that part of her that admired everything about River Song. Getting compliments from her still meant the world to the young Time Lord/human hybrid. 

“Thanks Mum. It really wasn’t all that bad. There’s some people that I’m still gonna keep in contact with,” she admitted. In all honesty, she was even considering maintaining a permanent residence here. She could be like her grandparents, and just travel when she wanted to but also have a home to come back to. Maybe she would even go to university. Higher education definitely sounded more interesting than secondary school had been.

“I knew you’d make friends,” River said, looking pleased.

“She did more than that,” Amy added with a smirk. 

“Grandma!” Raina felt her face heating up. 

“Really now? And you weren’t going to mention that to me?” River seemed far too fascinated, which was exactly why Raina hadn’t said anything. The teasing from her grandparents had been bad enough, she didn’t need her parents to tease her too! Well, she could handle her father, since he always got awkward and embarrassed when it came to the subject of romance. Sometimes Raina was truly surprised that she’d ever been born, with how hopeless her father could be. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Raina muttered. “Dad, can we go now?”

“Yes, leaving, that sounds like a great idea. Ponds, you have all your stuff? Okay, good, into the TARDIS you go. River, I’ll see you around, probably when I least expect it, knowing you,” the Doctor seemed as if he really didn’t want to think about Raina having relationships. Well, he did have a hard time letting his image of someone change. It took ages for him to see Amy as the brilliant woman she was, instead of the lonely little girl she’d been when he first met her. It had to be even worse for him to admit that his daughter was growing up. Normally his denial was a little frustrating, but in this case it worked out in her favor.

“Love you, Mum!” Raina interrupted her parents’ goodbye so she could give her mother a hug and escape into the TARDIS before she had to witness her parents flirting and/or kissing. 

“I love you too, Raina,” River told her, hugging her back tightly. 

Raina let go and then fled into the safety of the TARDIS as her grandparents said their goodbyes to their daughter, having ignored the Doctor when he told them to go into the TARDIS. As embarrassed as she was by her family’s teasing, she realized that she was still smiling. As much as they could frustrate her sometimes, Raina still loved her family more than anything. They might be the farthest you could get from normal, but she was still luckier than a lot of people. Her family had faced a lot of tragedies, but they were still here for each other at the end of the day. She knew that as long as they had each other, they’d be able to make it through anything.

“I missed you,” Raina spoke to the TARDIS as she made her way to the console. She had basically grown up inside of the TARDIS, so living elsewhere for a year had been rather jarring in some ways. While she had always spent a lot of time with her grandparents, she had never been away from the TARDIS for more than a few days. This time, with her staying linear while her father kept jumping forward, she had gone weeks and months at a time without being in the brilliant blue box.

“Are you talking to the TARDIS?” Amy had entered with Rory right behind her, and she seemed amused with her grand-daughter.

“Yeah, I am,” Raina confirmed, seeing no need to deny it. 

“You’re just like the Doctor sometimes,” the redhead laughed. “It’s not like she can answer. Except for that one time where she was in a human body.”

“Well, she may not answer verbally, but she responds in her own ways. It’s almost like I can sometimes feel her in the back of my mind. Mum and I both have a connection to her due to reasons I try not to think about,” Raina explained. She couldn’t remember when exactly she learned how exactly it was that River ended up part Time Lord. She also learned at some point that, much like her mother, she had a connection to the TARDIS due to, well, being conceived within her. It was all really gross, so she usually pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. The end result was all that mattered, and that was that she could communicate with the ship, just not in the traditional sense. 

“Yeah, I don’t want to think about that either. Just like I’m trying really hard not to think about what’s taking the Doctor so long to say goodbye to my daughter.” Rory looked like he was itching to go grab his sword. 

“Oh, come on, you know River is worse than him. She’s almost always the instigator,” Amy pointed out. That didn’t seem to make Rory feel any better. 

“So, are you guys excited to be travelling permanently again instead of just taking little trips here and there?” Raina decided to have mercy on her grandfather and change the subject. Plus, she was genuinely interested. They’d seemed set on choosing their life on Earth, yet here they were back on the TARDIS. 

“Honestly, yeah. I thought I was ready to stop, but this latest adventure helped me realize I wasn’t,” Amy admitted. “Brian encouraging us really helped, too.”

“Yeah, I still can’t believe how well my dad ended up taking all of this. I always imagined it would be too much for him,” Rory commented.

“You Williams men are just tougher than you look,” Amy said with a smirk. 

“We should bring him along again sometime,” Raina suggested. She quite enjoyed spending time with her great-grandfather. Actually, someday she wanted to have all her family go on a trip. Her parents, grandparents, and both sets of great-grandparents. It would be brilliant. 

“Who are we bringing along?” her father had finally entered the TARDIS. 

“Raina wants my dad to travel with us sometime,” Rory answered, giving the Doctor a suspicious look. 

“That’s a great idea! The more Ponds the merrier, I always say,” the Doctor agreed as he strode over to the TARDIS console. His hands hovered over the controls, and he looked around. “So, where to?”

The other three occupants exchanged glances, and Raina shrugged. She was perfectly content to let Amy or Rory choose where to go.

“Well, I’ve always thought it would be fun to visit New York,” Amy said. “I’ve never really been to America, yeah? Since last time it was my Ganger.”

That actually had never occurred to Raina. Of course, those events had happened before she was born. Amy had only just gotten pregnant with River back then. Though adult River had also been there for that adventure. And child River as well. For all her scolding to Raina about needing to be more careful, River sure seemed to cross her own timestream a lot. 

The Doctor and Rory both briefly looked pained at the reminder of what Amy had gone through, but the expression vanished from the Doctor’s face almost immediately. “New York, eh? I can do New York! Been there a few times.”

He quickly began darting around the console and flipping the appropriate controls. Raina thought about helping, but since she didn’t know the when, only the where, she wasn’t sure how much help she could really be. Then again, her father never seemed to know what time he would end up in. Even when he was intending to be in a certain time or place, it rarely ever worked out that way. Some of it was, of course, the TARDIS taking him where she felt he was needed. But the other times were just him being a bad driver. 

“We need to go put our stuff away first,” Rory reminded Amy. 

“Oh, alright, let’s get that done with. Doctor, you better not have messed with our room at all while we were gone!” Amy warned him. The Doctor did his best attempt at looking innocent, but nobody was convinced. 

Raina watched her grandparents disappear into the depths of the TARDIS, and then she turned to look at her father. The Doctor had a fond smile on his face as he watched the two of them walk away. She knew that he always missed them far more than he let on. He was always torn between trying to hold people close so he wouldn’t be alone, or pushing them away so they could be safe. She couldn’t help but feel grateful for her own existence, just for the simple fact that as a Time Lord it would take a lot to kill her. She could hopefully keep her father company for a very long time, assuming she was careful and didn’t blow through all of her regenerations. Since her father was already at 11, though, it was more likely that she would be the one to end up alone. She tried very hard not to think about that, though. If it ever came down to it, she could just do what her mother had done in Berlin and give him her regenerations. 

“Did you really have fun living on Earth?” Her father’s question pulled Raina out of her rather morbid thoughts, which was for the best. She wanted to just focus on being happy to be traveling with her family again.

“I did,” Raina admitted. “The school part was boring, but it was actually nice making friends. And I loved spending so much time with Amy and Rory.”

Calling her grandparents by their first names always felt a little weird, but she decided it was best to start now since they were going to be traveling again. At this point she was way too old to conceivably be their granddaughter. She also had to refer to her father as “Doctor” instead of “Dad” when they went anywhere because he was a very paranoid man who didn’t want anyone hurting her to get to him. She supposed it made sense, since people had hurt those close to him in the past. While he had made a lot of friends, he had also made a lot of enemies. Being the Doctor’s daughter was not a safe thing at all. 

“Well, now you’ll get to spend even more time with them, and without all the boring stuff!” the Doctor pointed out. 

“You’ve lived on Earth before, haven’t you?” Raina questioned. If UNIT’s files were anything to go by, he’d stuck around and worked for them a few regenerations ago. And, of course, he had lived there for some time in his first body while his granddaughter went to school. Raina so wished that she could have known Susan. She would always mourn all the family from Gallifrey that she would never get to meet. Still, she had her Earth family, and they were amazing. 

“Yeah, but different me, different rules. Sometimes I can stay in one place, but this body doesn’t like doing that,” the Doctor said, looking completely unashamed at his inability to just sit still for once. “Besides, what’s the use of just staying in one place when there’s all of time and space just waiting for us?”

Raina understood that. She’d spent her childhood yearning to see it all, and she had to admit it had been worth the wait. Of course, it wasn’t all fun and adventure. There were close calls that sometimes kept her up at night as she thought about just how wrong it almost had gone. There were days where she and her father weren’t able to save everyone. That had been the hardest to deal with, especially the first time. Her dreams these days weren’t always filled with the stories of her childhood. Now she had nightmares of everything bad that she had seen. In a way, spending a year on Earth had been good for her because it had given her a break from it all. But she felt ready to get back out there. Traveling with the Doctor, as many people would agree, would always be worth it.

“You’re right,” Raina agreed with a grin. “I’m glad to be back here. I had fun, but I feel like this is where I belong.”

“Of course you do! You’re my daughter, and you’re River’s daughter. No way you could resist the traveling.” The Doctor went back to fiddling with the TARDIS, and Raina winced at the bumps they hit along the way to their destination. She was so tempted to trail along him and flip some switches to make the ride easier, but she wasn’t as subtle about it as her mother, and she didn’t want to hear her father complain. 

The TARDIS came to a stop, and Raina felt the familiar excitement that came with knowing that beyond those doors was something new. Sure, it was still Earth, but she had never been to New York. Besides, her father had an uncanny ability to always get them into trouble, so the chances of this trip being boring were slim. Even if it managed to be completely uneventful, she felt confident that she would still have fun. After all, she was back in the TARDIS, and so were her grandparents. As long as she was with her family, there was no way this day could get ruined.

Amy and Rory came back into the console room, and the Doctor perked up even more. “Alright, Ponds! Let’s go see New York.”

Raina didn’t know exactly what was waiting for them beyond the TARDIS doors. She didn’t know what year they landed in, or what part of New York. There was also the chance that they’d ended up somewhere completely different. Still, whatever was out there, she felt more than ready for. All of her childhood had been spent hearing the stories of her family. She had learned about the faith of a little girl who grew into a bold woman. She had learned about the patience that would lead a young boy to become a man who would spend thousands of years guarding his love. She had learned about bravery from a woman of many names who had been lost and found so many times through her life. She had learned about kindness from an ancient man with a young face who had lost so much. 

All of that had prepared her, and her own life experience had shaped her into who she was now. Raina Song wasn’t quite a Time Lord, yet neither was she a human. She had no true home, but she had a time machine that she had been raised in. She was clever but sometimes naive, and she was bold but sometimes uncertain. She was a Song, a Pond, a Williams. But maybe the most important thing was that she was loved. All of the intentional lessons her family had taught her and all the time she had spent with each of them had taught her unconditional, unwavering love. As long as she had that love, Raina knew she could do anything.

So she strode forward without any doubts and pushed open the doors, ready for whatever was to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it! I actually finished! I apologize for this last part being late, but I had some stuff happening irl that kept me from working on it as much as I wanted to. And then I wanted to give my lovely friends the time to read through it to make sure there’s no glaring mistakes lol. 
> 
> Thanks again to Cat and Des for beta reading! And thanks to Aviantei for the constant encouragement!
> 
> Please make sure to check out the other stories written for [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm]. There’s a variety of fandoms being used, so I’m sure you’ll find other stories that you will enjoy!
> 
> After doing (fairly) consistent updates these last couple months, I want to keep posting consistently. I’m going to pull back to just posting something once a month, though, at least until I can build up a decent backlog of content. At that point maybe I can go back to posting bi-weekly. I have more stuff for this AU that I’m working on! And if anyone has any requests for this AU, I’ll try to see what I can do. There’s still so much to explore, from more of Raina’s childhood, to her adult life. There’s more Doctors and companions that I want to write her interacting with.

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with Raina a few years ago, and I have some other stuff written for her that I'll post at some point! But for now I need to focus on this fic, since it's part of a challenge. There'll be five chapters total. 
> 
> Thank you to Aviantei for giving me all of the support and encouragement I needed to get me writing again! 
> 
> Thanks as well to my friends Cat and Des for beta reading this chapter. Des knows nothing about Doctor Who so she was a little confused lol I'm so sorry friend. Also thanks Cat for letting me babble on about this show to you for the last few years lol. 
> 
> Next chapter will focus on Rory, as he teaches Raina about patience.


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